The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The Inheritance by Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb

Reviewing both for the contrast between the two. The Hunger Games takes place in an extreme dystopia. A futuristic and barbaric world. Each year 24 people between the ages of 12 and 18 (why so young? The book is for young adults.) have to battle each other to the death. At home people are struggling to survive, barely enough to eat except at the Capitol where they seem to live a life of opulence.

The Inheritance is a somewhat short collection of short stories. The Hobb stories take place in the Farseer World and feature The Wit (the ability to speak to animals.)

The Hunger Games is light. The main character could get her arm chopped off and I'd think, "Gee, Oh well." This is in comparison especially to the Hobb stories (more so than the Lindholm stories interestingly enough) where one really cares about the charaters. This final story of The Inheritance especially draws one in, about a young woman, an abusive man and a very useful cat.

Beyond just being drawn in more, there is just this feel to Hobb/Lindhom stories, where one feels at home, relaxed. Hard to say what it is. Just her sensibility perhaps. My wife found her similarity to me eeriy(sp). She mentions not being able to afford a synthesizer, goes on about cellos and has multiple stories that have a lot of music. And finally, she had a black cat named Loki even.

Now reading The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove which is annoyingly light. Especially annoying as it's 1864 (the middle of a war) and we're in the South. The characters are presented as decent enough people who just have this slight little flaw, what is it? Oh yes, fighting for slavery. Willing to die in massive numbers for slavery. But gosh, those South Africans from the future, they just hate blacks. Not like people from the South 150 years ago who are almost all actually very kind hearted. "Yes, the negro is inferior but we still should be nice to them," seems to be what the average Southerner thinks according to Turtledove.

Turtledove describes endless scenes of people getting their heads blown off, a million times a bullet has whizzed past the head of the one protagonist. And you know what? Who cares? Light as a feather. Couldn't care less. This book is in sharp contrast to the autobiography of Fredrick Douglass, where one is really drawn in hard to the reality of slavery. Turtledove's book is both light and kind of an offensive apolegetic, although not really an outright defense of the South. I'm 25% in and starting to just skim only because the question of what life would have been like had the South not been defeated really interests me. Otherwise would have thrown this book aside.